+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 22, November 22, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 22 CONTENTS. SECTION ONE: New references. What's new at the Web Design Reference site? http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/ New links in these categories: 01: ACCESSIBILITY. 02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 03: COLOR. 04: EVENTS. 05: FLASH. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: USABILITY. 12: XML. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Presidential Homepage Shootout Targets Speed and Accessibility By Andy King "While some sites were constructed for faster display times, most failed in accessibility tests, and no site got high scores on all counts. Here are the official sites of the ten presidential candidates, sorted alphabetically..." http://www.optimizationweek.com/reviews/president/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Float: The Theory By John Holly Bergevin and John Gallant aka "Big John". "If you are like most people, the whole issue of Floats is rather intimidating. The theory is difficult to grasp, and on top of that, the bugs are rumored to be numerous and nasty. Well fear not, because we will walk through the concepts, some of the bugs, and the practical uses of floats, in nice easy stages. Be assured that you will suffer no ill effects. Rather, a vast new world of positioning will open up before you. Onward!" http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/float-theory.html Flowing and Positioning: Two Page Models By John Holly Bergevin and John Gallant aka "Big John". "In doing web design work, it is likely you have heard terms such as 'Normal flow' and 'CSS Positioning.' However, if you are accustomed to using tables for controlling the placement of page elements, you may be slightly hazy concerning what these terms actually mean. If so, it's time we got down to some basics on the ways web pages are visually constructed on the screen by current browsers." http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/flow-pos.html Positioning By Luc "Positioning lets you define where exactly an element box will be placed. This can be relative to where it would be normally placed, relative to a parent..." http://www.dzinelabs.com/Pages/positioning.htm +03: COLOR. Check colour contrast by creating a greyscale image of your web page By Jim Byrne "This very simple tip will help you to check whether the colours you have chosen for you web pages have adequate contrast..." http://www.mcu.org.uk/show.php?contentid=71 +04: EVENTS. Information Architecture Design Made Simple: How to design a simple, yet robust web site December 5-18, 2003 Chicago, Bethesda, Minneapolis, Seattle http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/seminars_upcoming.htm#UIE +05: FLASH. Macromedia Updates Flash MX To Silence Critics By Matt Villano "Specifically, the update includes performance and stability improvements, as well as expanded documentation..." http://internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3107631 +06: JAVASCRIPT. Debugging JavaScript Using Venkman, Pt. 2 By Keith Schengili-Roberts "If you're looking for more than a rudimentary JavaScript debugger, look no further than Venkman. In part two of this series, you'll learn how to use it in your JavaScript development." http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/venkman/2/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. The Pains of Pricing By Andy Budd Many of web designers are no longer offering quotes for web projects, they are only offering flat rates for work by the hour. This seems to be the new standard since scope creep became as popular of a term in the last few years as blogging. http://www.andybudd.com/blog/archives/000106.html Interviews: Dan Cederholm By WaSP "The beauty of cleaning up old content that doesn't change, is that once it's clean, that's it. It won't have to be touched again." http://www.webstandards.org/learn/interviews/dcederholm/ +08: NAVIGATION. Transitional Volatility By Victor Lombardi "Notes on Transitional Volatility (PDF) by David Danielson (2003), also the topic of his master's thesis. It's a rare, rigorous look at the common guideline to 'make navigation consistent' in a world that has big websites where the navigation must change from time to time. His finding showed that complete consistency is not always the best route." http://tinyurl.com/ujyz On Search: Result Ranking By Tim Bray "If you're searching a big database, unless you're lucky you’re usually going to get a lot more matches to any given query than you want to look through. So it really matters what order that result list is in. Google got to be famous in large part because they do a good job on this; the stuff near the top of their list is usually about what you want, and if you don’t see what you need near the top of the list, it may not be out there. Herewith some remarks on how to go about sorting result lists. In general, the news is not very good; however, there are some promising techniques that are under-explored..." http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/11/13/ResultRanking +09: PHP. PHP Web Services Without SOAP By Adam Trachtenberg "Web services are hot these days, and SOAP gets a lot of the buzz. It's not the only game in town, though. REST advocates claim their approach is how the Web was meant to be. You decide. Adam Trachtenberg, coauthor of PHP Cookbook, demonstrates how to access Amazon.com's web services with PHP and REST; no special tools needed!." http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2003/10/30/amazon_rest.html +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Web Standards and Maintenance By D. Keith Robinson "It's one thing to design and build a forward-thinking, valid, and Web standards based site. It's quite another to keep that site forward-thinking, valid and Web standards based. It defeats the purpose entirely if you can't maintain your site and keep it up to standards." http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archives/cat_web_general.php Validators vs. Linters: What's The Difference? By Daniel R. Tobias "Understand what a validator and a linter are, what the difference between the two is, and how they can be used to help you improve your Web development." http://webtips.dan.info/validators.html And The Award Goes To... The winners of the ReUSEIT contest have been announced. The challenge was to create a usable, accessible, standards-based redesign of Jakob Nielsen's web site. http://www.builtforthefuture.com/reuseit/index.php#winners +11: USABILITY. Design by or for the people? By Nico Macdonald "User-centred design is now widely accepted, but the emphasis on its usability component under-estimates people's abilities and limits innovation." http://www.spy.co.uk/Articles/Guardian/PeopleAndDesign/ User Interface Design for Web Applications By Jean Tillman "It's a Different World from Web Site Design" http://www.digital-web.com/features/feature_2003-11.shtml Web Wizards Weave Their Magic "The workings of the internet and magic may seem worlds apart, but to one prominent web design thinker, they share much in common...Bruce 'Tog' Tognazzini argues that the secrets of successful websites are the same as those of successful magicians." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3190884.stm +12: XML. RSS Killed the Infoglut Star By Chad Dickerson Is Web surfing is pass'e? If you think that visitors will continue flocking to your web site through traditional surfing, following links, or saving bookmarks? Chad Dickerson, might have you thinking again. He in this article he says that "something "profound is happening with the delivery of information online with tools that leverage RSS." http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/07/03/26OPconnection_1.html RSS News Readers Browse for You By Jim Lynch http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1267205,00.asp [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? Accessibility Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/accessibility Association Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/associations Book Listings. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/books Cascading Style Sheets Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/css Color Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/color Dreamweaver Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/dreamweaver Evaluation & Testing Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/testing Event Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/events Flash Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/flash Information Architecture Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/architecture JavaScript Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/javascript Miscellaneous Web Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/misc Navigation Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/navigation PHP Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/php Sites & Blogs Listing. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/sites Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/standards Tool Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/tools Typography Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/type Usability Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/usability XML Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/xml [Section two ends.] ++END NOTES. + SUBSCRIPTION INFO. WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist The Web Design Reference Site also has a RSS 2.0 feed for site updates. + TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN) STANDARD. As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) Standard. Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN Standard information please visit: http://www.headstar.com/ten + SIGNATURE. Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN 55812-3009 mailto:lcarlson@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]